Is the 300-game Winner Actually Dead? Five Pitchers with a Chance at 300

C.C. Sabathia won the 225th game of his career on Saturday. While this is an impressive total (he trails only 44-year-old Bartolo Colon in terms of career wins among active pitchers), there was a time not too long ago that many pundits thought Sabathia was MLB’s best chance for another 300-game winner.

Sabathia broke into the league as a 20-year-old, winning 17 games in his rookie MLB season. Sabathia then proceeded to win double-digit games in each of his first 13 seasons, and by the time he was 33, he had over 200 wins (205, to be exact). Sabathia had more wins through his age-33 season than Steve Carlton (final tally 329), Roger Clemens (final tally 354), and Nolan Ryan (final tally 324). Of course Sabathia has slowed down in recent seasons, and reaching 300 wins now seems a relative long shot for the big lefty.

So is the 300-game winner dead? Are we doomed to start celebrating 250 as we once celebrated 300?

Starting pitchers are certainly throwing fewer and fewer innings, as well as making fewer starts per season. Just look at this chart of innings pitched leaders through the history of baseball, thanks to Michael Bein and his Graphical History of Baseball website:

(Graph courtesy of Michael Bein)

Ignoring the two strike-shortened seasons, that’s pretty much a perfect decline since the 1970s, with the most recent seasons being the lowest non-strike seasons we have.

Due to this trend, many have written off the 300-game winner as a dying breed, an achievement that may as well be relegated to the extinct portion of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown along with the .400 hitter and the sacrifice bunt. (Ok, we’re not quite there with the sac bunt just yet, but we’re getting close.)

However, a modern path to 300 wins may not be as hard as one might imagine. For proof, just look at our most recent 300-game winner.

Randy Johnson made his MLB debut at the rather late age of 25. He won just 10 combined games in his first two seasons, meaning by the age of 27 he needed 290 more wins to get to 300. Now Johnson was unique in that he was able to pitch until the age of 46, but he certainly provides the blueprint for a more unique path to 300. With pitchers keeping in better shape than ever before, pitching until the age of 46 doesn’t seem as wild as it used to, either.

So with all that said, who are the most likely candidates to reach 300 career wins in the next 20 years? Here are some candidates.

Honorable Mentions

Bartolo Colon (234 wins, age 44): Colon is the active leader in wins, and with the legend of BFBC growing day-by-day, I guess it’s impossible to truly rule out a run at 300. Although the thought of Colon still winning ten games a year at age 50 is more of a stretch than the belly portion of his Mets’ uniform.

Noah Syndergaard (24 wins, age 24): The other side of the spectrum, Syndergaard would be a trendy pick for many, as he is undoubtedly the best young pitcher in baseball. The extreme velocity he relies on and the injuries the rest of the Mets’ pitching staff hasn’t been able to avoid is just too worrisome here, though.

Max Scherzer, David Price, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez: This is your friendly reminder that it is exceptionally hard to win 300 games and many of the best pitchers in baseball are unable to achieve this milestone. Only 24 pitchers have joined the elusive club in the nearly 150 years of baseball history to date. The three listed above (along with about a dozen other names I could have rattled off) are great pitchers, but they will almost certainly end up outside the gates of 300.

Justin Verlander (174 wins, age 34): The last cut before our top five, Verlander’s 2015 (just five wins) may well end up haunting him in his chase for 300. That said, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Verlander age well and put up a good chase for 300.

Sad note: While researching this piece, two names kept coming up as young pitchers who had lots of wins in their first couple of seasons: Jose Fernandez and Yordano Ventura. The baseball community – and the world as a whole – was robbed of two amazing talents and incredible young men in the past few seasons.

4 Rick Porcello

Fresh off a season in which he won 22 games and a Cy Young Award, it’s not too surprising that Porcello would make this list. Porcello is one of just two active pitchers in their 20s with at least 100 wins (don’t worry, we’ll get to the other guy), and he is the youngest of the 100-game winners in baseball right now.

Porcello broke into the league as a 20-year-old and won 14 games in his rookie season. Since then, he has tallied double-digit wins every season except 2014, when he won nine games.

Porcello has a couple factors on his side when it comes to his chase for 300. In addition to his early debut and the 108 wins he already has banked, he has pitched – and will continue to pitch – for excellent teams. Porcello’s teams have made the playoffs four times in nine seasons, and the only truly bad team he played for (2015 Red Sox) was the season in which he failed to reach double-digit wins.

Porcello is signed with the Red Sox through 2019 and given that he won a Cy Young with them last season, it stands to reason that the club will look to lock him up for an even longer deal when the time comes. The Red Sox have as bright a future as any non-Cubs team in the league, and there should be plenty of wins in store for Porcello if he can continue to this solid start to his career.

Porcello is proof perfect that team context can matter more than anything else when it comes to wins, a large reason many modern baseball fans don’t view wins with the deference baseball fans of the past did.

Even still, 300 wins has a certain ring to it, and Porcello could well become the Don Sutton of his generation. A pitcher who was solid, if not spectacular, but pitched for plenty of great teams for a long time and ended up reaching the magical 300 as a result.

Percent chance for 300: 18%

3 Carlos Martinez

Here’s my wild card. Martinez is just 34 wins into a potential quest for 300. He won just four games in his first two seasons, and he is winless in three starts in 2017 just in case you thought I was going to play the “extreme recency bias” card.

Really, Martinez is a shot in the dark from a group of young, successful pitchers in baseball right now. Some folks might lean towards Gerrit Cole, who has 48 wins and is just 26 years old. Some folks might favor Julio Teheran who has 48 wins of his own, and is on an improving Braves squad. Some folks (ok, really just Dodger fans) might even throw Julio Urias‘ name into the ring.

I’m going with Martinez. For one, he’s on the Cardinals and, their slow start to 2017 exempted, that’s a franchise that has consistently run up wins totals in the 80s and 90s for the entire millennium. They’re a franchise that inspires a lot of confidence in the player scouting field as well, which is another advantage for Martinez, and it’s never a bad bet to hope for a Cardinals player to find his place in history. 

Martinez also has a nice pitch mix, and while he throws hard (96 mph), he doesn’t throw Syndergaard levels of hard. Martinez has only had one minor injury in his career, and he’s made a combined 60 starts over the past two seasons. (Plus, we know he’s built for the future, since he perfected the ultimate Two True Outcomes start his most recent time on the mound.)

Martinez is also *slips into baseball cliche robe* a highly self-motivated player. Check out this article from Viva El Birdos, where Joe Schwarz talks about how Martinez is perpetually looking to add to his arsenal and is never satisfied with the status quo.

While that previous sentiment could almost certainly be found in an article about any of these young pitchers, like I said earlier, Martinez is more representative of the group of young pitchers excelling in the majors right now. Martinez is my favorite, but really, this early, any pick is bound to be a bit of a shot in the dark.

Percent chance for 300 (Martinez): 6%; group as a whole: 22%

2 Clayton Kershaw

Now we get to the real contenders. These next two pitchers have very legitimate chances at 300 wins, even though both are still quite a ways off.

Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball right now, full stop. He has done the unthinkable over the past decade, lowering his career ERA each and every season. That’s no small feat considering his career ERA has been below 3.00 ever since 2011. Over the past six full seasons (plus the nub of the 2017 season), he has a 2.07 ERA, which translates to a 178 ERA+.

The 29-year-old has finished in the top five of the Cy Young vote each of the past six seasons, and he somehow seems to only be getting better with time. Last season was his lowest-ever ERA and we would have broken the single-season strikeout-to-walk ratio if he had qualified for the pitching title. (So far in 2017, he has 22 strikeouts and just one walk. Twenty-two! And one!)

But that previous note right there is the only reason he’s not number one on this list. Kershaw has missed a bit over time over the years, missing six starts in 2014 and 12 starts in 2016. That might not seem like much, but keep in mind that our man Randy Johnson averaged 30 starts a season for his 17-year main prime. Kershaw isn’t far behind if we average his last six seasons, but over the past three seasons has just averaged 27. That three-start difference over an extended period of time can be the difference, and in a chase that is already going to be a monumental task, every start matters.

That being said, there’s still a lot to love with Kershaw’s chances at 300. In an era of disappearing 20-game winners, he has reached that plateau twice; Johnson only got there three times total in his career. The Dodgers are going to be contenders for the foreseeable future, and Kershaw is going to be a Dodger for the foreseeable future thanks to his massive 7-year, $215 million dollar contract that kicked in before the 2015 season. Even when his contract is up after 2020, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the Dodgers not coughing up the dough to keep their main man around, especially considering some of the payrolls they have floated in the past.

Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball to watch right now, hands down. We don’t need a potential chase for 300 wins to need to tune in, but one day we may see such a chase occur.

Percent chance for 300: 33%

1 Madison Bumgarner

MadBum: our best chance for 300. Bumgarner is just 27 years old, but he is already at 100 wins for his career. Similar to Kershaw and Porcello, Bumgarner made his debut as a 20-year-old, and he was able to have success at a young age, finishing 11th in the Cy Young vote as a 22-year-old.

Bumgarner ranks ahead of Kershaw simply because of his stability. This is a pitcher who has made at least 31 starts every season and led the league with 34 starts in 2016. He’s a lock to throw 200 innings a year, and he has yet to appear on the DL in his nine-year career. Even when half of the baseball world seemed to think he was an injury risk after throwing 52.2 innings in the 2014 postseason, he came out and made 32 starts and led the league in complete games in 2015.

Bumgarner has never reached 20 wins in a season, but he has averaged 16 wins a season since 2012. Given his incredible injury-avoidance, if he can continue that 16 wins a season average over the next decade (a big ask, no doubt), that would leave him with 260 career wins as a 37-year-old. That’s well within striking distance.

Even if we give the seemingly-invincible Bumgarner a few missed starts and DL stints along the way, if he is at 250 by the time 2027 rolls around, there’s no way a competitor as fierce as MadBum is going to hang up the cleats as a 37-year-old within 50 wins of 300.

Bumgarner isn’t actually a Texan (despite some serious cowboy vibes), but he’s in the mold of a Roger Clemens/Nolan Ryan, two pitchers who pitched well into their 40s. (Even if the reason for one of those pitchers going past 40 is a little, well, sketchy.)

Lefties always seem to age well, and Bumgarner is far from the hardest-throwing pitcher around (91-92 mph), lowering the risk for injury even further. The Giants are nearly on par with the aforementioned Cardinals when it comes to team success this decade, and Bumgarner seems like a Giants’ lifer.

Next: Jackie Robinson Is Still Somehow Underrated Historically

Bumgarner is far from a lock for 300 wins – no pitcher is – but he’s as good a bet as we have in the major leagues right now. File this away for 2027 when we very well may be watching MadBum push his chase for history into overdrive.

Percent chance for 300: 40%